


always stuck and running from

by shadeandadidas



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Codependency, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, aftermath of war, because why not, it gets a bit sexual too, they cant decide whether they love or hate each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 11:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11600142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadeandadidas/pseuds/shadeandadidas
Summary: I hate you, Tommy thinks, I hate you so fucking much why are you here why won’t you just leave me alone all you bring is pain and misery and-He’d say it. He would. Sometimes the words are at the tip of his tongue just begging to be released whether they are in the water, on the sand, or watching the countryside go by train.But if he really, truly says it, Alex might leave him. And he hates the thought of that even more. He and Alex have been thrown together for just over a week and in that time, they’ve done everything together. They have been shot at, blown up, thrown into the water, and rescued over and over again. The only constant Tommy has had in all that time was Alex.The only constant he has now is Alex.





	always stuck and running from

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! Hi everyone! I saw the movie yesterday and can't stop thinking about it so here we are. The relationship that exists between Tommy and Alex fascinates me. Because they certainly aren't friends and don't even like each other all that much, but there is something there. and they rely on each other. so that's what this was born out of. 
> 
> Obvious spoilers for the movie~

_We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall never surrender-_

 

“You gonna eat that, mate?”

Bread slips through his fingers; snatched out of grasp, uncaring of an answer. Tommy lets it go without a fight because it tastes like sand. The bread, the air, his lungs; everything and anything tastes like an awful mixture of brine and salt and sand and oil and he’s swallowed enough of that for one lifetime, right? He doesn’t want any more of it.

Alex plops down next to him, crumbs at the corner of his mouth falling away. He says nothing more than that for a bit, content to eat in slow languid movements. Tommy watches him at the corner of his eye, watches Alex’s green gaze narrow and analyze everybody that moves to and fro in the small Weymouth township. Alex sniffs and rubs his nose, losing interest, before meeting Tommy’s stare.

“Have you eaten anything?” Tommy shakes his head dully. Alex sighs eyes and shoves the last bites of bread back in Tommy’s hand, “You need to. Eat it.”

He tries, but spits it out, “It tastes like shit.”

Eyebrows furrow for a moment, before leveling out. “Too fucking bad.”

_I hate you_ , Tommy thinks, _I hate you so fucking much why are you here why won’t you just leave me alone all you bring is pain and misery and-_

He’d say it. He would. Sometimes the words are at the tip of his tongue just begging to be released whether they are in the water, on the sand, or watching the countryside go by train.

But if he really, truly says it, Alex might leave him. And he hates the thought of that even more. He and Alex have been thrown together for just over a week and in that time, they’ve done everything together. They have been shot at, blown up, thrown into the water, and rescued over and over again. The only constant Tommy has had in all that time was Alex.

The only constant he has _now_ is Alex.

He eats the bread and stands up, hating himself for how he hesitates until Alex stands up as well and follows him towards the barracks in search of water.

 

* * *

 

 

The nurses in Weymouth tell him it’s natural not to want to be indoors.

One of them, a blonde bird who looks entirely too young to be dealing with pain and death, nodded carefully when Tommy muttered that he didn’t want to stay inside. That being inside an enclosed space reminded him of drowning. Of being sealed up and unassuming right before torpedoes hit and his life was thrown again into chaos.

Alex was right behind him when he talked to the nurse and right beside him as she pointed them towards a strip of grass a couple buildings down, hidden carefully from onlookers.

“You don’t have to sleep here,” Tommy says as Alex spreads out a thin blanket on the grass next to his own.

“Where else would I be?” Alex snaps, “Inside the barracks where boys are going to groan and whine and cry all night because they have fucking nightmares about dying?”

Tommy doesn’t respond to that. He turns his back and lays there for what seems like hours, fighting off the chill of English nights. He shivers and shifts and shivers again before an arm locks down on his waist and pulls him back into a solid chest.

“Stop fucking moving,” Alex mumbles tiredly, “I can’t sleep with you turning ‘bout.”

Tommy squirms for a moment more. Alex’s arm is a steel band, but it’s so warm. It’s warm and he’s exhausted and Tommy doesn’t hate the fact that he can feel Alex’s gentle puffs of breath against his neck like a reminder that they are both breathing.

That they are both alive.

He goes limp and scoots back just a touch and that’s-

That’s fine. He’s fine. _They’re_ fine.

He sleeps and doesn’t dream, but Alex must because when Tommy wakes up, it’s to Alex clamped down even tighter. Tight enough to where it’s hard to breathe and Alex’s elbow hurts against the bruises lining Tommy’s stomach.

“Can’t breathe,” Alex whispers throatily and Tommy turns to meet closed eyes and a tear stained face, “don’ wanna die.”

Tommy thinks about waking him, but Alex stills even as tears continue to leak from the corners of his eyes. So, he shuffles closer and grips the fabric of Alex’s ruined jacket and lays his head back down into Alex’s neck, breathing in the scent of hastily scrubbed skin and salt and oil that still hasn’t quite faded.

 

* * *

 

 

So not taking into account that Alex is kind of a fucking arrogant prick-

He always seems to make friends quickly. It’s something Tommy has never quite been able to do. He’s always been _too_ quiet and _too_ scrawny and-

Well.

Alex is none of those things. In fact, he’s the opposite. Tommy curses that fact when he holds a tin tray of rations in hand, zeroing in on Alex’s dark head at the opposite corner of the room despite the fact that nearly every solider in here wears their hair exactly the same way.

(He thinks he could now pick out Alex on a battle field with the same practiced ease.)

He spots him and hesitates because Alex is surrounded by soldiers on all sides; laughing and drinking and tossing bits of food back and forth. He’s so surrounded, in fact, that the space that had been present when they both walked in and claimed the table by the door is gone. Alex is smiling and chatting and gesturing wildly as well, even if his face is tight and his eyes seem to be constantly roving all over the cramped space.

_Fine._ Tommy swallows and glances around the hall for another seat.

One last glance back and- _there._

Tommy’s eyes catch Alex’s and the other boy seems to deflate for a second. Releases the excess tension that had been there even when he was laughing to boys more like him.

Alex nods him over and Tommy listens.

“Get the fuck up,” Alex says pleasantly enough to the soldier in the seat next to him. The soldier (red hair, blue eyes, a scratch down the side of his jaw) starts, but Alex’s gaze is firm. So, he does and circles to cram into the other side of the table.

Tommy slides in quietly, not meeting either Alex’s or the other boy’s gazes.

A hand waves in front of his face. “Who’re you then?”

The solider that speaks is lanky like him, but with softer blonde hair. Tommy shrugs and wants to answer, “Does it matter? Does it really matter who we are here?”

But Alex answers first. “He’s with me.”

The words are accompanied by Alex’s palm sliding under the table and clamping down on Tommy’s knee, which had been shaking up and down. Tommy relaxes and stops shaking, but Alex doesn’t release his grip. He slides it up a bit, to where it’s more comfortably rested mid-thigh and keeps it there. Tommy can’t decide how he feels about it.

(Or maybe he does decide, but refuses to think about _that_ now.)

Alex continues, “Like good luck charm, innit? Survived Dunkirk with this one, so I better keep him around.”

The other boys rumble about it for a moment, before deciding that if Alex says he’s alright, then he must be. Tommy rolls his eyes in disgust and elbows Alex hard in the stomach, but Alex isn’t wrong. Is that not why Tommy sticks close to Alex as well? _Survive Dunkirk, survive anything._

Alex gets back to charming the crowd with stories and jokes and every so often, his palm squeezes Tommy’s thigh and releases.

Tommy can’t quite decide if it was for Tommy’s benefit or his own. Nevertheless, Tommy grudgingly tangles his fingertips in the edge of Alex’s sleeve. Not quite touching skin but tugging enough to remind that he was there.

 

* * *

 

 

Tommy doesn’t see Alex for hours.

It’s a cold weight in his stomach covered up by a forced relief that _thank god_ , he doesn’t have to listen to Alex read and re-read every single newspaper that mentions the war. He doesn’t have to stand idly by while Alex regals soldiers of life as a trouble-making school boy in Cheshire; doesn’t have to listen to Alex’s tails of birds and blokes and-

Tommy tells himself that the itching feeling at the back of his neck, the way his hands get progressively shakier throughout the day, the way he looks up at every little sound that somehow might sound like the cadence of Alex’s voice… well, it’s just him coping with the past month.

_I hate you,_ Tommy thinks, _I hate you where are you you son of a bitch_

He knows, logically, that Alex is fine. That he had hovered this morning while they were putting their blankets away at wake-up that Alex was going on the prowl for a bird. That he was sick and tired of his hand.

_It’s fucking chaffing_ , Alex had complained. _Don’t tell me you never get tired of your hand._

(He did. He’s tired of using his hand. He’s so tired of timing jerk-off sessions in the mere minutes of the day he and Alex aren’t around each other. And the way he always knows when Alex has jerked off because of the flush on his cheekbones and the way he never fails to fall to their makeshift sleeping area, dismissive of personal space. Tired of the way his eyes linger and trace as Alex sleeps, mostly.)

So that’s where Alex is and has been since late afternoon. Not in German territory or a targeted ship or drowning in a pool of oil. He’s somewhere in town. Probably in a bird’s bedroom.

It’s fine.

(It’s _not_.)

It gets dark and Tommy lays out his blanket and stares up at the stars. He lays in silence for maybe an hour, maybe an eternity, before there is the sound of boots crunching on grass and rocks and he glances up.

Alex stands there, looking at Tommy with the most peculiar of expressions.

“Nice time, then,” Tommy intones dryly, looking back to the stars. Alex says nothing, but throws his bag down next to Tommy and curses. “So not a nice time.”

“Shut your mouth.”

Tommy shrugs like it doesn’t matter to him.

“The bird was fine,” Alex snaps, “She was fine and obliging and I had a fine time, alright? But I couldn’t fucking stay. She wasn’t- I just-"

Alex’s fist slammed down on the grass, “You were here and I can’t- _operate_ right when you aren’t there, mate. S’ not right.”

Tommy rolls onto his side and stares at him. Alex bites his lip and ignores his curiosity, “I think you’ve fucked me worse than the Germans.”

“Don’t say that.”

“S’true.” Alex runs a hand through dirty hair, “It’s _you_ all the time and I can’t breathe anymore unless…”

He lets it trail off, but Tommy knows what would follow. He knows because he feels it too. Can’t breathe anymore unless they’re with each other. What a bull-fucking-shit side-effect of war.

“How horrible.”

Alex slams his fist down again and shoves Tommy back onto his back, swinging a leg up and over, caging him in.

Caging him in.

_“What are you doing?”_

Alex leans over him, relaxed, sitting on Tommy’s thighs like nothing was the matter, that it was an every day occurrence, that it wouldn’t _get them thrown in jail_.

“Safety is you.” Alex says, “Sleeping is you. Eating, breathing, it’s you.” He adjusts his weigh and Tommy hisses sharply. Alex’s breaths are coming faster now, “Is it crazy to think that this is you too?”

He shifts again and Tommy’s eyes snap shut, his back arches a tad. Alex reaches down to tangle his hands in Tommy’s hair. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he whispers and arches again, _lovinghating_ the coarseness of their clothes together.

Alex leans down and nips at Tommy’s jaw, at his chin, his neck, his _lips._

“It’s you and me,” Alex whispers and Tommy nods quickly.

 

* * *

 

Hands tracing lengths and curves under the cover of darkness. Whines and gasps and cries and Alex jerks him further and further away from this hellish town and hellish country involved in a hellish war.

Tommy scratches Alex’s back and feels gratified when Alex bites him in return, leaving purple mark upon purple mark that will get harder and harder to explain away as their bruises from Dunkirk. When he moans and moves and drives in.

“Harder,” Tommy whispers and Alex obliges tenfold.

Alex clutches Tommy to him like he’s something precious and locks his arms around him like he’s to be protected. Tommy meets him every turn and thrust and wipes away Alex’s tears as they fall.

Tommy is so _so_ close and Alex must know that like he’s come to know everything else about Tommy because he speeds up and strokes him and puts a palm over his mouth to block out the sound of his moans. They are after all, nicely hidden away in their little grassy cover, but anyone could come running.

“Quieter,” Alex whispers, “You have to be quiet.”

Tommy clenches and this time, Alex is the one who moans.

“Quiet,” Tommy hisses back at him.

“Feel so good,” Alex whispers into his neck and Tommy doesn’t know if he is meant to hear it. “So so good.”

Tommy loses it and comes with a gasp in between them. Alex grins against Tommy’s neck and moves again, chasing his high, cradling Tommy’s head.

He reaches it and laughs when he rolls off of him. He stops, but then laughs again and again and Tommy rolls his eyes, but shuffles close to Alex’s chest when he wipes himself down and doesn’t protest the arm that comes down and around his hip.

“Not fucking bad for a virgin,” Alex hums in his ear.

“Tommy leans back and elbows him as hard as he can in the ribs, “I fucking hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Alex traces the length of Tommy’s ribs under his shirt and sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hoped you liked it! And if you did, please go ahead and pop on down to the bottom and hit that Kudos button! Or even better, tell me your thoughts in the comments! I love to chit chat.
> 
> Also you can find me on Tumblr at shadeandadidas


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